Hex, or Hex Media, were a London-based multimedia group founded in the early 1990s by artist Robert Pepperell, coder Miles Visman and the DJ duo Coldcut. The group set out to exploit the creative potential of, what was then, the new media technologies of CD-ROM, multimedia, interactive computing, video sampling and portable video projection.
Working across a wide range of media - from computer games to art exhibitions - the group pioneered many new media hybrids, including live audiovisual jamming, computer-generated audio performances, and interactive collaborative instruments.
Their work was published on a series of interactive CD-ROMs, and exhibited widely - including at the JAM exhibition in London's Barbican Gallery in 1996 – and through the 'in-house' music label, Ninja Tune.
The group dispersed in the late 1990s, with later members Stuart Warren Hill and Robin Brunson going on to form the VJ outfit Hexstatic.
Coldcut are an English electronic music duo composed of Matt Black and Jonathan More. Credited as pioneers for pop sampling in the 1980s, Coldcut are also considered the first stars of UK electronic dance music due to their innovative style, which featured cut-up samples of hip-hop, soul, funk, spoken word and various other types of music, as well as video and multimedia. According to Spin, "in '87 Coldcut pioneered the British fad for 'DJ records'".
Multimedia is a form of communication that combines different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditional mass media which featured little to no interaction from users, such as printed material or audio recordings. Popular examples of multimedia include video podcasts, audio slideshows and Animated videos.
The Compact Disc-Interactive is a digital optical disc data storage format that was mostly developed and marketed by Dutch company Philips. It was created as an extension of CDDA and CD-ROM and specified in the Green Book, co-developed by Philips and Sony, to combine audio, text and graphics. The two companies initially expected to impact the education/training, point of sale, and home entertainment industries, but CD-i eventually became best known for its video games.
The CDTV is a home multimedia entertainment and video game console – convertible into a full-fledged personal computer by the addition of optional peripherals – developed by Commodore International and launched in April 1991.
Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information during cutscenes, games that are primarily presented through FMVs are referred to as full-motion video games or interactive movies.
Adobe Shockwave is a discontinued multimedia platform for building interactive multimedia applications and video games. Developers originate content using Adobe Director and publish it on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a web browser on any computer with the Shockwave Player plug-in installed. MacroMind originated the technology; Macromedia acquired MacroMind and developed it further, releasing Shockwave Player in 1995. Adobe then acquired Shockwave with Macromedia in 2005. Shockwave supports raster graphics, basic vector graphics, 3D graphics, audio, and an embedded scripting language called Lingo.
Kaleida Labs formed in 1991 to produce the multimedia cross-platform Kaleida Media Player and the object oriented scripting language ScriptX that was used to program its behavior. The system was aimed at the production of interactive CD ROM titles, an area of major effort in the early 1990s. When the system was delivered in 1994, it had relatively high system requirements and memory footprint, and lacked a native PowerPC version on the Mac platform. Around the same time, rapid changes in the market, especially the expansion of the World Wide Web and the Java programming language, pushed the interactive CD market into a niche role. The Kaleida platform failed to gain significant traction and the company was closed in 1996.
Hexstatic are an English electronic music duo, consisting of Stuart Warren Hill and Robin Brunson, that specializes in creating "quirky audio visual electro." Formed in 1997 after Hill and Brunson met while producing visuals at the Channel 5 launch party, they decided to take over for the original members of the Ninja Tune multimedia collective Hex that had disbanded around the same time. They soon collaborated with Coldcut for the Natural Rhythms Trilogy, including the critically acclaimed A/V single "Timber".
Grolier was one of the largest American publishers of general encyclopedias, including The Book of Knowledge (1910), The New Book of Knowledge (1966), The New Book of Popular Science (1972), Encyclopedia Americana (1945), Academic American Encyclopedia (1980), and numerous incarnations of a CD-ROM encyclopedia (1986–2003).
Digital Video Interactive (DVI) was the first multimedia desktop video standard for IBM-compatible personal computers. It enabled full-screen, full motion video, as well as stereo audio, still images, and graphics to be presented on a DOS-based desktop computer using a special compression chipset. The scope of Digital Video Interactive encompasses a file format, including a digital container format, a number of video and audio compression formats, as well as hardware associated with the file format.
Media Vision was an American electronics manufacturer of primarily computer sound cards and CD-ROM kits, operating from 1990 to approximately 1995 in Fremont, California. Media Vision was widely known for its Pro AudioSpectrum PC sound cards—which it often bundled with CD-ROM drives—it is also known for its spectacular growth and demise.
Nick Philip is a graphic and multi-media artist and clothing designer based in San Francisco, California.
Christine Tamblyn was an American feminist media artist, critic, and educator.
Academic American Encyclopedia is a 21-volume general English-language encyclopedia published in 1980. It was first produced by Arête Publishing, the American subsidiary of the Dutch publishing company VNU.
The Amiga CD32 (stylized as Amiga CD32, code-named "Spellbound") is a 32-bit home video game console developed by Commodore and released in Europe, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London on July 16, 1993, and was released in September of the same year.
Mattel Interactive was a video game publisher and software distributor.
Verbum was an early personal computer and computer art magazine focusing on interactive art and computer graphics. It was edited and published from 1986 until 1991 by Michael Gosney. It, along with Info 64, was one of the first periodicals to be entirely based on desktop publishing techniques. Referring to itself as a "journal of personal computer aesthetics," Verbum was notable for placing more emphasis on creative aspects of its subject matter in contrast to the overwhelmingly technical content of other publications.
LV-ROM is an optical disc format developed by Philips Electronics to integrate analog video and computer software for interactive multimedia. The LV-ROM is a specialized variation of the CAV Laserdisc. LV-ROM is an initialism for "LaserVision Read-Only Memory".
Virtual Murder is a four-part murder mystery adventure video game series developed by Creative Multimedia Corporation. The games were released in 1993 and 1994 for Macintosh and Windows PCs.
Eku Wand is a German Designer and Multimedia director. Wand is a professor of media design and multimedia at the Braunschweig University of Art with a research focus on Interactive Storytelling.
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